


Deep Breaths

by Nautilusopus



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Bad Decisions, C-PTSD Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Series, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unbeta'd, cloud stop that, cloud what are you doing, dirge and crisis core still not canon, hard drive spring cleaning, i accidentally the whole face, is this dangerous?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 18:57:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13441173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/pseuds/Nautilusopus
Summary: Smell, memory, and emotion are all closely linked. It's easy for Cloud to forget this most of the time.





	Deep Breaths

**Author's Note:**

> This thing (which was written about two-ish years ago) was gonna be a longfic but then I realised there was absolutely no way it could end well. I might come back to it someday when I can figure out how to make this interesting but still canon compliant (well, MY canon complaint). 
> 
> I do consider this canon to basically everything I write though. This is the very beginning of the "string of deaths" among former Shinra staff after Meteorfall that Cloud may or may not have been involved in but definitely totally had nothing to do with him.

Cloud did not particularly care for crowds. One person at a time, he could deal with. Two were a challenge. A hundred or more, all pressed up against one another, was a waking nightmare. 

He'd allowed himself to be dragged out into the marketplace anyway. He also didn't really want to stay indoors. Too cooped up. He'd gotten the feeling that Tifa probably thought he was messing with her, saying he was unhappy being indoors all the time with no one else around, then complaining when he had to be around other people. Nobody really seemed to sympathise. He'd at least expected Vincent to understand, but Vincent had happily spent thirty years in a coffin and didn't understand why Cloud would get lonely and bored indoors anyway. 

It wasn't as though parts of this were entirely unpleasant. There was something comforting about being surrounded by food and sun and colour. It reminded him a little of Costa del Sol. Edge might have been a bit shabbier, and a little less clean, but the city finally felt alive, in the way cities should, and seemed to invite everyone that stepped into the streets to feel alive with it.

Still, there were better places in Edge he could think of to be than in a crowded street, with noises and smells jumping out at him at every turn, the clatter of wheels on recently-laid cobblestone and cement, the din of conversation, the hum of coolers and lights laid over one another like an unbalanced stack of papers. It was all far too loud. He did his best to ignore the racket (something he had become rather good at as a necessity, in order for it to be physically possible for him to sleep while still hearing clearly what was going on in the bedroom three houses over) and focused on scents instead. 

There, by the fruit stand. A little bit of fresh bread and sweat and the shampoo she had used this morning. He relaxed a bit and went back to looking for a shirt that looked thin enough to keep him from being too miserable during the summer. Edge was much warmer than Midgar had been, somehow -- perhaps simply because he had spent most of his time indoors while stationed there. Or perhaps the perpetual overcast smog had simply shut out any heat that would have reached the streets below.

He looked towards Tifa again, holding a used t-shirt with "Veteran's Charity Run! Est. 5696" embossed on the back, to ask her what size he was. He supposed it wouldn't matter much as long as it wasn't too small, but Tifa was a bit more particular about wearing clothes that at the very least mostly fit, and they borrowed each other's work clothes often enough for a brief argument to have come up about it at least once. He opened his mouth to speak, getting a whiff of burnt cheese and mothballs and -- 

Cheap aftershave and clove cigarettes. 

Cloud dropped the shirt. 

The scent still hung faintly in the air, but Cloud knew what the source was. It was difficult to forget something like that. As though on cue his brain filled in the scent of antiseptic, and tainted blood, and voices in the dark.

He quickly paid for the shirt, handed it to Tifa, and excused himself. 

He followed it, as though in a trance. He wasn't really sure why. The trail took him down another three streets and a couple back alleys and into a small cluster of recently erected duplexes. Tifa's scent faded away into the background with the rest of the marketplace, and the rest of the world seemed to fade away with it. It was the middle of summer, but the air felt sharp and cold and thin. 

He kept walking, his breathing growing quicker, each breath taking in a bit more of the scent. The memories started coming faster now, more vivid than they had ever been before. 

_In, out._ (A pair of rough hands gripping his arm, forcing it into a clamp, twisting it until it popped clean out of its socket, cold hands prodding the area, wiping it clean with antiseptic for the scalpel that followed soon after.)

 _In, out._ ("Be a good boy.... You let me work on my project, I don't tell the doctor you tried to bust out? Got it?" He clicked the pen down, then, realising his mistake, back up again.)

 _In, out._ ("No one is coming to help you. If you scream, I'll kill you myself. The doc only needs one, right?")

 _In, out._ (A steel-toed boot connecting with his jaw as he opens his mouth to scream, tearing it sideways with a crunch, and the sound of rhythmic clicking of a pen as the button popped in, out, _thud_ , in, out, _thud_ , in, _out --_

He was inside his house now. He didn't quite remember letting himself in, easing open the window. The smell of cloves and tobacco was all around him, and now he really could smell the antiseptic, clinging to the white coat hung up by the door. There was a table set, with a bottle of wine, bought from the same stall Tifa had been looking at two hours ago. The house was empty.

Then he came downstairs, and their eyes met. 

He was faintly aware of the man saying something. His heart was pounding in his ears. His fingers closed around the bottle. The man was yelling now. He ignored this too. He felt some sort of resistance before he managed to push through it. His scent was everywhere, and there was a crunch, and a tearing noise, and something sharp bit into his hand as whatever he was holding gave way, and he was faintly aware of making noise himself, a long drawn out scream tearing itself from his body --

Something splashed in his eye and stung, momentarily blinding him. 

He flinched and dropped what he was holding, quickly locating a sink to wash his face off. A good amount of red came off of both it and his hands, and it looked as though a bit of glass had jabbed into his palm, not piercing his dragonskin gloves but still being angled enough to be felt. He shook the water off his gloves, then removed them and put them in his pocket, and returned to the dining room. He froze in his tracks, staring at what greeted him on the floor. 

The man -- Liu, he remembered, Nurse Liu with his projects -- lay prone on his back. His face was completely unrecognisable, the skin being ripped to a pulp and swollen with blood and barely-formed bruises. The centre of his face was convex, the bridge of his nose, the bone behind it, and the lower edge of his left eye socket all having been shattered with the bottle Cloud had beaten him with, which was now smashed, bits of glass embedded in his forehead. His eyes had been crushed, his lips torn, still frozen in a scream. His neck had been badly bruised from where Cloud had been gripping it, cutting off his cry for help. There was blood and bits of grey matter on the floor, and on his shirt, and on Cloud. They were both drenched in wine, and mixed with the smell of his aftershave, and the clove cigarettes, and the blood, and the urine from when Liu had soiled himself, the room stank evilly.

He stared at what was left of Liu for a while, perhaps longer than was wise. He did not get up. He did not produce a clipboard. He did not jot down notes for anyone. He did not conduct his own projects, collect his own samples. He did not do anything more than slowly bleed onto the carpet and reek of death on top of everything else. 

Cloud turned, closed the window, and left out the front door. 

**Author's Note:**

> "i mean i dunno it just kinda happened" probably wouldn't hold up very well in court


End file.
